"He is one of those rare types of humanity born to control destiny, or to accept, without murmur, annihilation as the natural consequence of failure."--N. Y. Daily News, May 15, 1865.

Jefferson Davis, the former president of
the Confederacy, was captured by Union troops on May 10, 1865.
This unsigned Harper's Weekly cartoon reflects the widespread
rumor that Davis had tried to escape by dressing as a woman. The
artist pictures him in a hoop skirt and bonnet, carrying a hatbox
labeled "C. S." for "Confederate States." The
image is intended to contradict the stoic description of Davis conveyed
by the quotation from the New York Daily News, a major
voice of the Peace Democrats ("Copperheads").

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee,
the commander of Confederate forces, surrendered to General Ulysses S.
Grant, commander of the Union forces, at Appomattox, Virginia.
Davis believed that a guerrilla war could still be fought, but Lee and
General Joseph Johnston rejected the strategy as futile. Davis's
wife, Varina, and children had already left the Confederate capital of
Richmond, Virginia, on March 27, and the Confederate president set out
on the evening of April 10 to join them in Greensboro, North
Carolina. The Davis party continued southward toward Florida,
where they hoped to catch a boat for Texas. Once there, Davis
would direct the continued fighting of the Confederate troops under
General Kirby Smith. (Later, on June 2, 1865, Smith's
Trans-Mississippi Department was the last Confederate force to
surrender).

At the break of dawn on May 10, the
Davis encampment outside Irwinville, Georgia, was awakened by
gunfire. Union cavalry troops were seen approaching in the
distance, and a pleading Varina Davis finally convinced her husband to
escape while he still could. Inside the darkened tent, Jefferson
Davis put on what he probably thought was his overcoat and departed for a nearby
swamp. He had accidentally donned his wife's raglan (a cloak-like
overcoat). Mrs. Davis threw her shawl over his head to obscure his
identity, and then sent her female servant with a bucket to walk with
her husband as if they were fetching water.

The Union soldiers probably thought at
first that the two figures were both women, but then a corporal noticed
the spurs on Davis's boots. The corporal rode over to the two, and
pointed his gun at Davis, asking his identity. The Confederate
president considered lunging at the federal officer and making a break
for it, but his wife ran to her husband and threw her arms around
him. The soldiers soon realized whom they had captured, and the
Davis party was escorted to Macon, Georgia, the headquarters of General
James Wilson, the Union commander of the region.

From Macon, Jefferson Davis was transported to Fort Monroe in
Virginia. The arresting officers had not reported anything
unusual, but gossip soon spread among soldiers not on the scene that
Davis had been wearing women's clothing when he escaped. By May
13, the rumor had reached the ears of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of
War. He obtained "eyewitness" accounts from men
who wanted part of the $100,000 reward money offered for Davis's
capture, and passed word of the incident along to the Union press.
Stanton recognized that the story, which threw suspicion on Davis's
masculinity and bravery by depicting him as a cross-dressing coward, was
an excellent opportunity to humiliate Davis and thus undermine any
attempt to portray him as a hero or martyr.

On May 23, to gain more credence for the story, a U.S. army officer
ordered Mrs. Davis to hand over her raglan and she innocently
complied. When he returned the next day for her shawl, she was
suspicious of his motive but forced to surrender the garment.
Davis himself had already heard whispered remarks about his womanly
flight, and both he and his wife soon saw the newspaper articles and
cartoons.

When Stanton viewed the clothing, though, he knew it would not be
helpful for propaganda purposes. Mrs. Davis's raglan was not only
nearly identical to her husband's, but was similar to the standard
raincoat worn by Union soldiers. The shawl, too, was not unlike
that worn by many men of the period, including the late President
Abraham Lincoln, to keep warm in the poorly heated buildings of the day.
Stanton therefore had the garments placed in a War Department safe,
where they remained for decades.

The War Secretary slightly altered his account of Davis's capture by
stating that the former Confederate president tried to flee while
wearing a woman's coat and shawl, but not a dress. The Northern
press, however, continued to depict Davis in hoop skirt, petticoat, and
other clearly feminine articles of clothing. Davis was mortified
by the false accounts, and it added to his depression during his
two-year incarceration.

Davis was finally released on bail in May 1867. He published
his memoirs in 1881, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,
still upholding the virtue of the Confederate "lost
cause." In October 1978, Congress and President Jimmy Carter
posthumously restored Davis's American citizenship.